Directions and priorities for pywbemcli 0.7.0

[andy-maier]

Bug and issue status:

• Open bugs
• Open mandatory issues for 0.7.0
• Open non-mandatory issues for 0.7.0
• Open issues without release target

Release content of 0.7.0:

• Support for pywbem 1.0.0 (issue Support for pywbem 1.0.0 #504) - Prio1 - DONE - PR Fixes #504: Changes to pywbemcli required for pywbem 1.0.0 #613

• Work down TODOs (issue Work down TODOs #586) - PARTLY DONE - PRs Refactor tests to pytest and remove a number of TODOS. #652, Partly fixes #586, #458: Addressed some TODOs and improved command_test() #656

• Cleanup:

  • Pylint cleanup (issue Address pylint issues #585) - DONE - PRs Partly fixes #585: Addressed Pylint issues #611, Resolved Pylint issues #620, Partly fixes #585: Addressed Pylint issues #655, Fixes #585: Resolved Pylint issues #662
  • Convert old style string formatting to new style (issue Convert old string formatting to new style #583) - DONE - PR Fixes #583: Use new print format exclusively #614

• Testing:

  • Code coverage: The 0.6.0 release has 90% coverage (despite the goal to increase that). Goal for 0.7.0 is to increase the coverage to 94% (issue Increase test coverage to 94% #577) - MOVED to 0.8.0
  • Change all tests to use pytest (issue Change all tests to use pytest #91) - MOVED to 0.8.0
  • Tests using mock_prompt fail (issue instance associators/references tests with wildcard keybindings fail #458) - MOVED to 0.8.0
  • Cannot pass WBEM URI with quotes through test stdin (issue Cannot pass WBEM URI with quotes through test stdin #387) - MOVED to 0.8.0
  • Function testing of subcommand server only uses single namespace (issue function testing of subcommand server only uses single namespace #183) - MOVED to 0.8.0
  • No way to capture output with simplified_test_function (issue No way to capture output with simplified_test_function #182) - DONE - PR Fixes #182: Added output checking in test_print_insts_as_table() #625
  • Add install tests (issue Add install test #590) - DONE - PR Fixes #590,#591: Added install test; enabled install from source dist via setup.py #602

• Documentation:

• Installation:

  • Add support for installing from unpacked source dist archive (issue Add support for installing from unpacked source dist archive #591) - DONE - PR Fixes #590,#591: Added install test; enabled install from source dist via setup.py #602

• Profiles:

  • Expand profiles and centralinsts to use wildcard to select org, profile, version (issue Implement wild cards for the choice of options for the profiles command #480) - Prio 1 - DONE - WONTFIX
  • Expand the centralinsts cmd to use the shrub to display information on that central instance (issue Extend the profiles so that we can show a tree of profiles #481) - MOVED to 0.8.0

• Ease of use:

  • Find means to show classes filtered by characteristics, part 2 (issue Find means to show classes filtered by characteristics #447) - Prio 1 - MOVED to 0.8.0
  • Add documentation for repl search for history (issue Add documentation for repl search for history #595) - Prio 1 - DONE - PR Fixes #595: documentation of history search in interactive mode #597
  • Location of the pywbem connections file area (issue Location of the pywbem connections file #596) - Prio 1 - DONE - PR Fixes #596: Location of connection file #659
  • Explore possible use of tab completion usage with options variables and more command arguments. Today we have implemented the ? as a sort of artificial completion mechanism where these wildcards trigger some sort of lookup and present a list of possible results. Thus INSTANCENAME has a lookup if the keybindings is simply the "?" wildcard. Could we consider extending these to a) use tab completion in place of wildcard lookup (note that it would have to work in both command line and interactive cli modes) b) use the wildcard completion on more options (issue Implement completion of cmd line arguments and options of the command line #482) - MOVED to 0.8.0
  • Use the wild card concept now used on INSTANCENAME for the value component of other options and arguments: Prio 1
    • server profiles and server centralinsts.
    • --namespace option
    • --name general argument to get name of persistent connection
  • Allow unsetting of general options in interactive mode (issue Allow unsetting of general options in interactive mode #350) - MOVED to 0.8.0
  • Simplify the output of single value server commands (issue Simplify the output of single value server commands #594) - DONE - PR Fixes #594: Simplify output and implement TEXT output group #600

• Output formats:

  • Add JSON as output format (issue Add JSON output format #184) - Prio 1 - MOVED to 0.8.0
  • Add a table format for classes. Currently we can only display classes as MOF, REPR, XML. (issue Add table format for class object output #249) - Prio 2 - MOVED to 0.8.0

Potential items for future releases beyond 0.7.0:

• Testing:

  • Refactor the tests so that we run more tests in interactive mode. This would significantly increase the speed of running the tests (most of the time for each test is pywbemcli startup).

• Indications:

  • Possible indication listener (run as background process or separate tool) (issue Add an indication listener to pywbemtools #430)
  • Subscription management (issue Add the subscription manager to pywbemcli #4)

• Ease of use:

  • Expand class tree to show superclasses and subclasses (issue Expand class tree to show superclasses and subclasses #449)

• Output formats:

  • Add Latex format (issue Add Latex format for output in table format #185)
    • However Karl has not come up with a logical table equivalent to date. SUGGESTION: Look at Jim's and Karl's existing table displays and try to sort out how you handle things like overrides, qualifiers, etc.
  • Consider a machine-readable form of output that would allow command redirection at least at the shell level. Note that click itself does not really support the idea of redirection in the interactive mode (output of one command available as input to the next command) but we could use the click context as a way to pass results to input in the interactive mode (Which would make the command mode different than the interactive mode). Some examples of usage might be: Run a command to get the namespaces and then run anther command on all of those namespaces.The easiest idea for this is the processing of things like connection names, instancenames, classnames, and namespace names. or lists of the same.

• Maintaining server state in interactive mode:

  • Consider maintaining some information between commands in the interactive mode beyond what is maintained by the Server class. Remember that profiles and namespaces are maintained in the Server class instance as long as that object exists. ex. classes by namespace. Thus we would extend our pywbem_server to allow it to maintain more information. The information could include at least class names by namespace (issue Cache classes or at least classname retrieved from a server #483)
  • In the interactive mode consider maintaining connection information in memory when different connections are selected so that if a server was selected, any previous current connection would not be completely cleaned (today we clean each connection as it is selected). Some ideas are stash of class names or classes by namespace. Maintain the concept of a current thing; current class, current instance that would be applied to commands (issue Cache all information about an active server when switching connection #484)

• Other ideas:

  • Support getting operation statistics from the server (this was implemented in at least pegasus and j server) (issue Support for getting operation statistics from the WBEM server (and statistics command group) #588)
  • Extend pywbemcli so that plugins representing new commands and groups could be added by users (issue Support for user plugins in pywbemcli #587)
  • Specify property type in instance create to avoid class lookup (issue Specify property type in instance create to avoid class lookup #187)
  • Support embedded instances as input (issue Support embedded instances as input #589)
  • Analyze SBLIM's wbemcli against pywbemcli (issue Investigation: Analyze cimcli and SBLIM's wbemcli against pywbemcli #451)